James McCarthy is hardly not recognised.
He’s appreciated and he’s respected and he’s an important member of an outrageous Dublin team. An All-Ireland-winning Dublin team. Again.
Yet there’s something so understated about him and his effect.
You go through the Dublin squad and you could pick out five of their bench that are more heralded than the Ballymun man. Go through the defence and you could pick out five of those players that are held in higher acclaim than the wing back.
But he gets on with it.
Quietly, effectively, reliably, James McCarthy just goes about his business week in, week out and he rarely falters. He rarely slips up.
Well and good.
Sunday was different though.
On Sunday, on a rain-ruined Croke Park, in a pressure-cooker All-Ireland final, there was no place for unsung heroes this time around. Only heroes. And James McCarthy stepped up to the plate.
Joe Brolly spoke at half time of Dublin’s 0-12 to 0-9 win and he criticised Kerry for playing with too much head. That they weren’t playing with their hearts.
There’s something almost animalistic about the Dublin defenders in particular when they step onto a pitch and flick that switch. They transform. They become ferocious, non-negotiable, primal beasts that impose themselves so aggressively on a game. Yes, sometimes it boils over but there’s a hunger about the capital outfit that turns them into savages hunting down ball like their lives depended on it.
James McCarthy, on Sunday, embodied that ravenous mentality and that savage hunger that Dublin have rarely been given credit for. He epitomised how much they wanted their All-Ireland back. How much they needed it.
No Kerry jersey could move in Croker without McCarthy sheep-dogging them to where he wanted. He was directing traffic, he was putting up road blocks and offering his body as a sacrifice for full-on collisions if it was necessary.
What’s that Olympic motto? Citius, Altius, Fortius. Faster, Higher, Stronger. That was James McCarthy in Dublin’s hour of need. That was him all over.
If a green jersey ran, he ran faster. If someone jumped, he jumped higher and he threw his body around like a wrecking ball against Kerry souls that just didn’t want it as much.
Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s men tried to play their way through the biggest game of their lives with their heads. James McCarthy played with heart. He played like a man who was chasing a dream and there was no talking him out of it.
And there wasn’t even a moment you could pick out. There wasn’t a pass or a shot or even a last-gasp tackle. None of the whole game even had that. There was no Connolly-type piece of magic or a Brogan intervention. There were just little moments of relentless effort gathered together for the cause. And, for Dublin’s number five, there were more of them than anyone.
He tackled and harried. He hit with his shoulder. He won breaks and drove through challenges. He linked the play and, of course, with their backs to the wall, hanging on in injury time in a one-score game, McCarthy emerged from a huddle of players with the last ball of the match nestled in his uncompromising clutches.
It was like he arrived at headquarters like a man possessed and there was no way he was ever going to leave the field beaten.
In a game where Bernard Brogan was slipping, Diarmuid Connolly was kept off the scoreboard and players were dropping ball left, right and centre, it was up to Jim Gavin’s soldiers to unleash hell and ambush the Kingdom. And who better to send in to lead the troops than a warrior who was seemingly sick of sitting in the trenches?
Because, under the rain and the falling darkness, McCarthy got off the leash and announced that this was his turf now. This was his stage and he lit it up like he should never have been behind the scenes. Instead, the stars took a backseat, they were consigned to labour and the half back put on a heart-warming performance for the ages.
Nothing spectacular, nothing flashy, nothing you’ll even pick out and analyse.
Just 70 minutes of hard running, honesty and noble hard work that amounted to the sum total of All-Ireland glory.
70 minutes of sweat and guts that we’ll look back and marvel at. We’ll tell the younger generations about that time when men were men and when men were made like James McCarthy.
We might not remember any specifics or plays or even the score but we’ll remember the day that a Ballymun man stole the show with nothing but pure heart. We’ll remember his hunger and aggression and we’ll remember his example that hard work wins the day.
We’ll remember the menace of a man so driven.
We’ll remember the day that the unsung hero decided to sing.
